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There is a widening gap between what customers expect and what companies can deliver, according to a Zendesk executive.

Jeff Titterton, chief marketing officer at Zendesk, said whether it’s a 100-year-old financial services stalwart or a fast-growing consumer tech startup, customers are comparing it to the best experiences they’ve ever had.

And, Titterton said, companies can’t always keep up with the gap widening between customer expectations and what companies can deliver.

Over the past five years, customer satisfaction is down 2.2 per cent, from 94.6 per cent in 2013 to 92.5 per cent in 2018, decreasing nearly a full percentage point in the past year, Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report 2019 revealed.

The report, based on global survey results, focus groups, and the Zendesk Benchmark, an index of product usage data from 45,000 companies using Zendesk, companies of all sizes across industries and geographies lack the capabilities needed to keep up with ever increasing customer expectations.

Nearly half of customers surveyed (46 per cent) said their expectations are higher than they were a year ago.

The report indicated that for those companies still struggling to deliver the experience their customers expect, they can do what the most successful companies have done, which is to invest in an open, flexible platform, meet customers where they are, lean in to proactive engagement and invest in artificial intelligence.

“Nearly 70 per cent of customers expect support teams to collaborate so they don’t have to start over when contacting the same company through a different channel,” Zendesk said.

“This means companies need to manage customer data across all aspects of the customer experience and ensure a single record of the customer persists across channels, devices, and requests.”